Elisa Dozio

Born: August 2, 2000 — Triuggio, Italy
Position: Middle Blocker
Height: 6-0 (183 cm)
Current Club: Volley Barzanò (Italy, Serie B2 — 2025/26)

Roots in the Brianza Heartland

Elisa Dozio was born on August 2, 2000, in Triuggio, a small comune nestled in the Province of Monza and Brianza in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, roughly 25 kilometers northeast of Milan. It is a landscape of gently rolling hills, ancient villages, and the kind of close-knit community where sport plays a central role in daily life — and where volleyball, one of Italy’s great national passions, has deep roots. The Brianza corridor running north of Milan has produced dozens of club teams across every level of Italian volleyball’s federation-structured league system, giving young players like Dozio an unusually rich environment in which to develop.

She is the daughter of Domenico Dozio and Sandra Vergani, and grew up alongside an older sister, also named Sandra. The family environment was clearly supportive of athletic ambition, and it did not take long for the young Dozio to find her sport. Tall for her age and physically gifted, she gravitated toward volleyball, a game that rewards exactly the kind of attributes — height, quickness at the net, and the ability to read the opposing attack — that would come to define her as a player.

She attended the Don Bosco Institute, a school in the Brianza area with strong academic and extracurricular traditions, where she continued developing both as a student and as an athlete. The dual commitment to intellectual and athletic rigor would become a hallmark of her life, carrying her all the way to an American university and a pre-dentistry track years later.

Early Club Career: The Italian Pyramid

To understand the arc of Elisa Dozio’s development, it helps to appreciate the Italian volleyball federation’s league structure. The Federazione Italiana Pallavolo (FIPAV) organizes competition from the top-flight Serie A1 all the way down through Serie A2, Serie B1, Serie B2, Serie C, and further regional divisions. Clubs rise and fall through this pyramid via promotion and relegation — a system that gives even lower-division championships real meaning and forces young players to earn every step up.

Dozio entered that system early. In 2014, still in early adolescence, she was already playing organized club volleyball at a level high enough to earn her team — Volley Sovico, a club from the Brianza area — a first-place regional finish. That kind of result at such a young age is a meaningful marker: Italian youth volleyball is not a casual activity, and placing first in a regional competition means defeating other established clubs with their own talented rosters. It announced Dozio as a player worth watching.

From Volley Sovico she moved to Volley Team Brianza, where she continued her climb through the federation structure. In 2019, she was part of the squad that won the Serie C Championship, earning promotion to Serie B2 — a genuine step up into nationally organized competition. Serie C in Italy is still a provincial and regional affair, but winning it is the ticket to the more structured national levels, and Dozio had helped her club punch that ticket.

Her most significant pre-American achievement came during her time with Pallavolo Concorezzo, a club from Concorezzo — a town just a short drive from her native Triuggio. Concorezzo had been on a remarkable upward trajectory since entering national competition in 2020-21. In 2022, Dozio was part of the team that won the Serie B2 Championship and earned promotion to Serie B1 — two consecutive championship-winning campaigns across different clubs that underscored her reliability as a contributor to winning programs. She was, in other words, not someone who merely participated; she helped teams advance.

Education and the Bridge to America

Between her club volleyball career in Lombardy and her decision to pursue NCAA competition, Dozio enrolled at IULM University in Milan, a prestigious institution well known for its programs in communication, languages, and the arts. It is a cosmopolitan environment in one of Europe’s great cities, and the experience likely shaped her confidence in navigating unfamiliar cultural and academic contexts — a skill she would soon put to use in a very different setting.

The path from Italian club volleyball to American college athletics is not a common one, but it has become more traveled as NCAA programs seek out athletes who have competed in Europe’s demanding developmental systems. For a player like Dozio — who had already accumulated years of competitive federation experience, multiple championship titles, and a solid academic record — the NCAA’s graduate transfer portal offered a genuine opportunity to test herself at a new level while continuing her education.

She enrolled at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, pursuing a degree in Pre-Dentistry and Biology — a demanding academic track that speaks to her ambitions beyond the volleyball court. Murray State, a Division I institution that competes in the Missouri Valley Conference, would become the setting for the most visible chapter of her athletic career to date.

Murray State: The Racer Years (2022–2025)

Dozio arrived at Murray State for the 2022 season, wearing jersey number 10, and quickly established herself as one of the most important players in the Racers’ front line. Under head coach David Schwepker, a veteran of more than two decades leading the program, Dozio found a role that matched her strengths: the middle blocker position, where a tall, quick player can disrupt opposing attacks at the net while also contributing offensive punch in short, efficient swings off quick sets.

In her first season with the Racers in 2022, Dozio appeared in 26 matches as a middle blocker. She tallied 154 kills, averaging 1.64 per set, and ranked second on the team with 63 total blocks — a number that speaks directly to what a middle blocker is asked to do at the collegiate level. Blocking in volleyball is part anticipation, part athleticism, and part chemistry with teammates, and Dozio’s 63 blocks in a single season was a clear signal that she had made a smooth transition from the Italian club environment to American Division I play.

The 2023 season was even more impressive. Dozio appeared in 25 matches for the Racers, racking up 188 kills for an average of 1.88 per set — a meaningful jump from her freshman campaign — and led the entire team with 21 service aces on the year. That last figure is particularly notable: in modern volleyball, an ace-per-set average is an elite indicator of a player’s ability to generate pressure at the service line, and Dozio finishing first on her team in that category shows a dimension of her game that goes beyond the net work a middle blocker is primarily known for. She totaled 236 points on the season, a cumulative measure of her offensive contributions.

Her impact in individual matches could be decisive. In a memorable late-October 2023 road contest against Valparaiso, Murray State was pushed to a fifth and deciding set. After trailing 11-10 in that final frame, Dozio delivered back-to-back service aces to give the Racers a 14-11 lead — a swing in momentum that effectively secured a come-from-behind road victory in one of the conference’s more competitive match-ups. She finished that game with 13 kills alongside her four aces. It was exactly the kind of clutch contribution that does not always show up prominently in a stat line but defines a player’s value to her teammates.

Dozio remained with the Murray State program through the 2024 and 2025 seasons as well, appearing on the Racers’ roster across four campaigns in total. The 2025 season proved to be a difficult year for the program overall — the Racers finished 4-21 with a 2-14 conference record in what was a challenging Missouri Valley Conference season dominated by a historically strong Northern Iowa squad. But the program’s struggles in the win column did not diminish what Dozio had built over her time in Murray, and her presence in the lineup through multiple seasons reflected the staff’s continued confidence in her contributions.

Academic Achievement

One dimension of Dozio’s story that deserves its own mention is her academic commitment. Pursuing Pre-Dentistry and Biology at an American university while competing in Division I volleyball is, by any measure, an ambitious undertaking — particularly for a student-athlete navigating coursework in a language that is not her first. The rigor of a pre-dental science track alongside a full NCAA schedule of practices, travel, and competition is something that not every athlete manages successfully. Dozio’s decision to pursue that path reflects the same disciplined work ethic that has carried her through a competitive athletic career.

Murray State’s volleyball program has a strong tradition of academic recognition in the Missouri Valley Conference, and the broader culture of the Racers’ program — which regularly places players on conference scholar-athlete recognition lists — suited an athlete whose ambitions clearly extend beyond her playing days.

Return to Italy: Volley Barzanò (2025/26)

After completing her American collegiate career, Dozio returned to Italy and signed with Volley Barzanò for the 2025-26 season, playing in the Italian Serie B2. Barzanò is a small comune in the Province of Lecco in Lombardy — not far geographically from Dozio’s native Triuggio — and the club competes in the same federation system where she first built her game as a teenager.

The return home carries an interesting narrative arc: Dozio left Lombardy having earned her stripes in the regional and lower-national tiers of Italian volleyball, spent four years competing at the Division I level in the United States, and came back to pick up where she left off in the federation structure — bringing with her whatever she gained from years of American collegiate competition, including a more polished understanding of the game at its higher levels. At 25 years old and standing six feet tall with genuine middle blocker credentials, she is a real asset to a club climbing its way through the Italian league pyramid.

Player Profile and Style of Play

At 183 centimeters (six feet) tall, Dozio operates primarily as a middle blocker — the position at the center of the net that serves as both a defensive wall and a quick-attack weapon. Effective middles require a sharp volleyball IQ: they must read the opposing setter’s tendencies, time their jumps against hitters who are making decisions in real time, and transition quickly enough to threaten on offense with fast, short-tempo attacks off quick sets. The fact that Dozio was productive in all those areas across multiple competitive environments — Italian federation play, NCAA Division I, and back to Italian federation competition — suggests a player with both natural gifts and the kind of coachable, detail-oriented mindset that allows for continued development.

Her service ace production at Murray State is worth noting again as a marker of a well-rounded player. Middle blockers who can also apply pressure with a varied serve are genuinely difficult to game-plan against, because they present threats from two different positions on the court. The 21 aces she posted in the 2023 season alone put her at the top of her team — a team that included outside hitters whose service games would ordinarily be expected to lead.

Social Media

Elisa Dozio is active on Instagram at @elisadozio.

Looking Ahead

With her American collegiate eligibility complete and a return to the Italian federation system underway at Volley Barzanò, Dozio stands at an interesting point in her athletic career. She is young enough — just 25 — to have meaningful seasons ahead of her in Italy’s competitive club structure, and the combination of her federation pedigree (multiple championship titles at the Serie C and B2 levels) and her four-year American college career gives her a profile that is unusual in the Italian mid-division landscape.

Whether her trajectory leads further up the Italian pyramid, toward Serie B1 and beyond, or whether her ambitions in dentistry eventually reshape her priorities entirely, Elisa Dozio has already built a career that reflects consistent dedication to her sport across two different countries and three different competitive systems. That kind of record — steady, championship-earning, multi-environment success — is exactly what a good volleyball player looks like when you clear away the noise and look at the body of work.

For a kid from Triuggio who first ranked at the top of her region in 2014 and spent the next decade winning championships wherever she landed, that is a story worth knowing in full.

Elisa Dozio plays middle blocker and is currently competing for Volley Barzanò in Italy’s Serie B2 (2025/26 season). She can be found on Instagram at @elisadozio.